


Peace is a Warrior's Death

by Tanrit



Category: Halo (Video Games) & Related Fandoms, Mass Effect - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Halo 3, Starts Mass Effect 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 20:39:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14626599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tanrit/pseuds/Tanrit
Summary: With a dying friend, a universe he doesn't understand and another war for him to fight in, John wonders how his story will end. Will he spend his life fighting or will he know what a time of peace actually looks like?Meanwhile Shepard has also found themselves in a new situation. Brought back from death with a new mission, the fate of the galaxy weighs heavily on their shoulders and there is no one else who can carry the weight.





	Peace is a Warrior's Death

  No one dreams in cryosleep.  
  This is a fact that everyone is told before their first time on ice. For John, in cryo or in a bunk, there never is time for dreams. Always another assignment, another battle, another retreat, another regroup, and another assignment. This is the rhythm of this war, the cycle which John as lived theses past years. Dreams have no place in this routine. Because dreams would be of a better place and time, they would be without Covenant, without Flood, without war. He does not dream because a time without war, with no impending battles, is a time he has never known. He was raised for war, trained to be the best of humanity, to be a Spartan. He could never dream of a time without war, nor imagine it. And yet. First there were the insurrectionists. Rebels on the Outer Colonies tired of the influence, dependance and disrespect the Inner Colonies and Earth had on their worlds. That is who John and is fellow Spartans were trained to fight. To suppress. Other humans. At the time there were no other threats. No one else could feasibly bring down the might of the UNSC except the worlds with the resources Earth needed. And the Spartans did their job flawlessly on every mission to thwart the insurrectionists. But it was aliens, the Covenant, that ended the threat they posed.  
Some of the higher-ups called it fortunate that the Spartans were combat ready when the Covenant arrived. The Outer Colonies were composed of thousands of worlds at the time of first contact. When they went dark one by one, they accused the UNSC of subterfuge. Half of them were glassed when they finally asked for help. Help the UNSC could not provide. The deployment of Spartans became the key to victory for many engagements. However, it rarely mattered because they were foot soldiers. And it was the battles in space, between fleets that decided the fate of worlds. Worlds that would always end up bombarded by the Covenant plasma weaponry, the surface superheated into an inhabitable wastelands of glass. But in the end, the Covenant was defeated. By heresy in their ranks, by an opportunity created by a temporary ally, John killed the Covenant leaders, cutting the head off the snake. The Flood followed. A parasitic lifeform, awakened from their prisons in ancient relics during the Human-Covenant war. It had brought down empires older than mankind, defeated individuals wiser and more powerful than anyone human or alien. And it was hungry for more hosts until it was defeated, also at the hands of John. The facility that John destroyed to end the Flood menace damaged the ship he had tried to escape on.  
  He doesn't know where he is. He doesn't know if the remains of his ship, the Forward Onto Dawn, will ever be found. He doesn't know if there is still war waging somewhere in the galaxy. For now, there wasn't another assignment, there wasn't another battle, so John slept. He did not dream, because no one dreams in cryo. It would have been a fitting for a warrior to disappear with the arrival of peace. If peace were a thing that lasted. John's last words to Cortana before going to sleep were for her to wake him when she needed him. He couldn't stay awake with her. He needed food and he needed oxygen, both of which are in short supply in a spaceship that got torn in half by a explosion in slipspace. Meanwhile Cortana was a artificial intelligence, one at the edge of falling apart into rampancy. When she woke him, he thought it was time, that she was at her final moments and desiring some company before the end. Instead, she was guiding him to a weapons locker, informing that there were intruders on board and they weren't hailing her call signs.  
  “How many are there?” John asked, checking the ammo count on his MA5C rifle. With a half full ammo clip and the plasma sword on his magnetized thigh holster, John knew he wasn't equipped for a prolonged encounter.  
  “I'm still trying to hack into their comms, said Cortana. It's strange, I'm seeing pieces of human dialects but it's mixed with pictograms I've never seen before.    
  - Could we have landed where the Reclaimers went, the ones Guilty Spark took me for? John proposed  
  - No. What sensors I still have on the ship's exterior show that we are still somewhere in the Milky Way. The Reclaimers left this galaxy before coming back with the Flood at their heels, Cortana countered, There we go I'm in their system. Two floors up, near the engineering entrance.”  
  John wound his way through the corridors, silent in the vacuum of space. His massive frame moved swiftly, the design the Mjolnir offering him the protection of a tank with the agility and strength of world class athletes. As he climbed the stairs up, Cortana offered commentary as she navigated the intruders software systems. There were five of them wandering in a group with a ship waiting for them on the outside. They were all speaking human languages, one English, two Spanish, a Chinese and one Sxonasia. They were communicating fluently thanks to a translation suite. An extremely hefty one, Easily thousands of non-human dialects. No Covenant races, just names like Turian, Asari, Vorcha. All this new information was exciting to an AI like Cortana. But it made John worry.  
  A dozen different alien races and a human-only team is sent here, why? Why is there no evidence of Covenant if they were still in the Milky Way? Cortana's behavior was also a worry. Rampancy was brought on by an AI thinking themselves to death, spiraling into over-analysis of information. Cortana had already accessed and stored into her memory more information than any other AI, entire Covenant, Forerunner and UNSC databases cumulating into millenias of intel from hundreds of different worlds. Seven years is the average deadline before rampancy. Cortana is seven and half years old. Would this new intel be what pushes her to the edge, leaving him truly alone? For now, she's here, in his suit and they have to go make contact with these strangers. Hopefully they'll be friendly and offer a ride to UNSC space where someone could fix her. John flipped off the safety from his rifle as he approached where Cortana said they were. It had been a long time since things had gone the way he hoped. John rounded the corner, the path he had taken placed him between mystery squadron and their exit. This way he would control the engagement should things escalate. As John approached them, their rear guard alerted the rest and they all turned to face him.  
  “I am Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 with UNSC, stated John, do you understand me?”  
  They looked amongst each other, clearly speaking on their private comms to each other. Cortana could hear them but she was having trouble patching John in due to a significant difference in operating systems. She relayed what she heard though, they were confused at John's presence and didn't understand where he had come from. Cortana yelled for John to take cover as they raised their rifles. John strafed and opened fire, his energy shield protecting him. Before breaking line of sight with hallway's corner he noted that all them also seemed to have energy shields. They didn't appear to be more than foot soldiers, so to have such advanced technology raised more questions and worries. They would have to be dealt with later. John didn't have enough bullets to pierce through multiple shields and they would have plenty of time to pierce his before he could get close enough to use the plasma sword.  
  “Cortana, what's the fastest way to their ship?  
  -Give me a sec, she replied, cross the hallway and take two lefts and a right.”  
  John started running as she gave the directions. He fired the last of his bullets, forcing the hostiles to take covers leaving to sprint back out of their sight. He took the first corner and Cortana piped in:  
  “They've realized where you're heading off to. Hurry, they're pilot is prepping to leave!”  
  John reached the last corridor, the angular looking shuttle giving off the recognizable hum of an engine warming up and closing its door. His radar picked up his pursuers trying to keep up as he sped up. He was fifteen meters away when the shuttle took off. No hesitation, he approached the shattered edge of the Forward Unto Dawn and leapt. Zero-gravity carried him across the distance, his mag-boots latched onto the shuttles side before it could speed away. The pursuers had started firing from the spot where he had jumped. John called for Cortana to get the shuttle door open. She replied to hang on a couple of minutes when he spotted an emergency access handle. The whole maneuver to open the door and get inside took less time then it seemed as the bullets peppered his shielding to its limit. Kneeling in the relative safety, he looked up when he heard the pilot swearing: “What the fuck are you?” The phrase and tone of panic reminded him the way Covenant Grunts and Jackals of reacted to his presence on the battlefield. John tapped the tint on his helmet, turning it off and showing his face to the panicked pilot.  
  “Don't worry, I'm human. I am Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 of the UNSC. Could you take me to the nearest command post?  
  -The fuck is the UNSC? replied the pilot  
  - Cortana? John raised his head as he spoke to the AI in his head  
  - I'm as confused as you are. Until I can connect to a proper data terminal to figure out what's going on, I'm as much in the dark as you are.”  
  John turned back to the pilot.  
  “Look, I was in croystasis aboard the remains to ship your comrades boarded. If you could all bring to the nearest settlement, I would grateful.”    
  He looked at John with apprehension. But he at least seemed to understand where the confusion stemmed from. He agreed to bring John somewhere after they picked up the rest of his colleagues. John deemed it reasonable and shared a nod of agreement. That's when Cortana chimed in, they hadn't realized she had been listening in on their private channel. They were planning to ambush him once the shuttle door opened, talking about how he was needed for interrogation and research. The pilot was keeping quiet, looking nervous and ignorant that John was aware of their plan. The shuttle shook as it landed.  
  “They couldn't make things easy, could they?” Cortana asked rhetorically. John gripped the handle of the energy sword. The shuttle door opened and they hostiles leapt in. John armed with a close range weapon in such tight quarters was not a fair fight for them. Wether they had second doubts or not as he killed their allies didn't matter because they wouldn't have had those thoughts for long. The skirmish took ten seconds and last John as the last man standing. He strode over to the pilot seat, having a long sigh as he sat. John took Cortana's chip from his helmet and placed her on the shuttle's computer.  
  “It'll take me a few minutes to figure out how this shuttle and the star maps work, Cortana's holographic form said before facing him, are you okay?”  
  Physically he was fine. She had access to his suit's systems so she knew that. John looked back had the bodies he had broken. Plenty of things weren't okay and he felt it many are questions that would be answered in due time. But a thought had gotten stuck in his mind, one he had enough experience on the battlefield to recognize as important to voice.  
  “It's been a long time since I last had to fight humans.”  
  Cortana gave an understanding smirk as she got to work figuring out where they were. She confirmed they were in the Milky Way, but that everything was different. Planet names besides Earth didn't match. Some space stations like Arcturus Station and Citadel were new. There was also the whole Relay system that was radically different. After some discussing and running some tests to get a handle of the ship, John and Cortana agreed to head to the nearest proper settlement to gather information and figure out where to go from there afterwards. It would be a space station named Omega.


End file.
